How Teaching English In China Can Improve Your Game

First things first; this is not a ‘How to get laid in China’ post; to get laid in China, you need just five things;

1. Be foreign. Black, White, Latino, Indian or Middle-Eastern, it doesn’t matter. Order of race attractiveness: 1) White/Chinese, 2) Latino, 3) Black, 4) Middle Eastern, 5) Indian (just because they’re Chinese doesn’t mean they can have a race ladder)

2. Have enough cash. A teachers’ salary is more than enough.

3. Have entry-level game. Entry level meaning that you aren’t afraid to approach and make moves.

4. Shoot for the middle. Especially as a first-timer with limited language skills. You have to accept that many of the top-end girls in China are either a) locked down by the ballers with ca$h, or b) prostitutes. Not that the middle is bad—the ‘average’ Chinese girl is about 1-1.5 points higher than the ‘average’ American girl because she knows how to dress herself and is skinny. But understand where your aim will be at. It doesn’t matter if you look like an H&M model; if you speak no Chinese, are broke and have less game than a Fijian hockey player, it’s not going to be easy for you. Skip this step if you have solid Chinese or cash.

5. Speak at least rudimentary Chinese. This is the hardest step.

6. Money (optional). For hookers, skip steps 1-5.

No, this post is about something else entirely: how teaching in China can help you grow your game back at home. Beautiful concept, isn’t it? When you get past all the routines and the negs and all the calculation of it all, game is just like everything else—one thing flowing into another.

I have just returned from a shade over 13 months teaching English in China. It was a whirlwind adventure full of chaos, mystery, intrigue and the love and attention of a handful of beautiful Chinese girls. It really offered me something different, something that not many people I knew had done, considering that almost everyone who teaches English in the Orient goes to Korea or Japan – highly Westernized, first-world nations with access to most of the same amenities we have back at home and larger by comparison English populations.

I wanted to go where the talk was the loudest, the heat was the heaviest and things were changing the fastest, and so China. Since I have returned, I have noticed a few things different about the women, and how they react to me in my home, the United States of Canada; not just in a the sense of ‘Oh, he’s well-traveled and speaks an exotic language!’ [Ed. note: to 30% fluency], just stuff that pertains to the basics of game and the way I carry myself.

I’m no spring chicken and chances are, you aren’t either. You know the routines, you know how to act, you know all the material that’s covered in the first semester at Game University. These things I’ve picked up, barring a change in my appearance (there hasn’t been one), I’m led to believe have originated from the basic essence of what my job was; teaching the most impatient people with the lowest of attention spans (children) how to speak English. Here are the things that help me get laid over there (and ‘over there’ doesn’t mean just China; it can be any country where English is a minority language).

1. I speak in a slower, lower and more clear voice and use smaller words

This adaptation took me a few months. In North America you can speak fairly quickly and get the point across, but just what point are you trying to push, especially to women? It hit me about five months in; ‘Whoa…slower, deeper voice, fewer big words and more deliberate pronunciation…I speak to my kids almost the exact way I speak to the girls back at home!’

For all we often rightly deride women for their emotion-based decision making, short-term ‘I don’t care if it’ll be worth $1000 next week, sell because those shoes will only be $100 for one more day!’ thinking and the Grand Canyon of dissonance between what they say they want and what they actually pursue. In much the same way a man sees a girl with her slim waist, shiny hair, big tits and warm smile and instantly thinks ‘I have to fuck that’, a woman runs a similar algorithm evaluating you in her mind as soon as you open your mouth. They pick up on the small stuff; a guy speaking quickly will be perceived to be nervous and inexperienced, and the guy who uses too many big words will be assumed to be socially maladroit or eager to impress. Nine times out of ten, these perceptions will be accurate.

But the man who speaks slow and low, without ostentatious wordplay, like you need to speak when teaching English to children who speak a completely different language? That man knows what he’s doing. Rhetorical: how many players do you know who ramble on quickly and incoherently?

Yeah, me neither…

2. The respect

Men as a rule tend not to need a constant stream of respect, validation and gentle taps on the ass to feel good about ourselves or properly do our jobs; that is why your paycheck has a line that reads how much money you made, and not lines that tell you how super-awesome and fantastic you are as a person.

That said, receiving respect definitely helps. We work for money, but it’s also nice to know that your work brings value; we men are at our best when we know that we’re doing a good job. The Chinese word for teacher, Lǎoshī, is derived from the name of the Daoist philosopher Laozi (second in reverence only to Confucius, who you may be loosely familiar with through the classic ‘Confucius say’ jokes) In addition to ‘teacher’, it means ‘master’, ‘old’ and ‘venerated’.

North America is funny in that way. Despite there being at least ten female teacher-male student controversies to every male teacher-female student story and the belief that ‘Prescribed gender roles were manufactured by the patriarchy to keep us girls in our place!’, whenever a woman wants to teach children, all is right and well in the world, but whenever a man wants to teach children, ‘He’s probably a pedophile’.

Even then, over here teaching is really not that respected a profession (North American teacher = babysitter with holidays off and a pension), and if it weren’t for the frequent time off and favorable compensation-to-difficulty ratio, I’d question why anyone would want to do it.

Fact is, at my job, the parents and my kids loved me. I’d get invited out for dinner or into their houses frequently, and if I ever ran into them on the street, they always said hello and asked how I was. Stop me if I sound like a bitch at any time here, but there’s something to be said about how a man feels when he knows that he’s providing value.

3. There will be blood

In my first few months, I lost 25 pounds. I was let go from my first job while my VISA was in traction. I had to live in a filthy hotel for almost a month. I had to uproot on a dime for 5 weeks to teach in a town I knew nothing about. I had to weather an STD scare (negative) alone with no one to translate. I struggled daily with the more esoteric aspects of the language (a spoon has more in common with a space ship than Chinese does with English, and it’s spoken at machine-gun speed). Advice: if you come to China, learn some Chinese first.

But I’m thankful for all of this. In our lives we seek to avoid struggle, we want to live free from pain and difficulty, but struggle is essential; a man is at his best during the struggle because it helps a man grow. For all the bad shit we see happening to men in North America, it’s still the safest, easiest place in which to live anywhere on the planet. Where else can you just shut up and do what you’re told and still land a decent job? Where else in the world is it nearly statistically impossible for a competent adult to die of hunger? Where else can you live where it’s actually illegal for your landlord to fail to provide heating and hot water, or for your boss to choose on a whim to decide not to pay you?

Not China. The streets run red with the blood of foreigners who the naturally insular and xenophobic locals have little to no interest in helping. Sure, I took my course and bought the lines, ‘Oh yeah, there’s always someone to help you!’. If you take a TESOL course like I did, no doubt you will hear this, but let me tell you something that they won’t; there is no cadre of Chinese people willing to do whatever it takes to make sure you’re sufficiently comfortable. I’m not painting all Chinese people with such a broad brush as if to say none of them give a shit about you, but just do this thought exercise; if someone came from a wealthier, more prosperous place to your country to receive three times your salary while working half as many hours, would you jump over yourself to ensure their maximum comfort? They’ll likely provide some degree of help for you, but for the most part, it’s up to you to navigate this strange place on your own.

Everything I accomplished in China, from adjusting my game (China is all about World Game), cultivating a few good future connections, and learning the language, I had to do without the benefit of a broad support network. Is there anything more man than surviving, thriving, even, by your own skills and guile? At least once a week, when I’d wake up in the morning that old limiting voice in my head would say, ‘Fuck it all, just go back home, take some shitty office job, make your 40k annually and continue to fuck soulless, unfeminine girls until it gets boring and then get married. Sure, after the ring goes on she’ll expand faster than the universe and one day out of nowhere she’ll probably just decide it’s easier to ruin you than to actually work at the marriage, but at least your family will be happy and you’ll be safe and comfortable…’

But I shut that voice out, and I grew and evolved because I did that. It’s much the same as getting into the game in the first place; you’ll read Roosh or Roissy, think ‘That sounds so easy, I can do that!’, go out and see very little results and want to give up, but only through struggling and learning, can you step your game up. In China, be prepared to struggle, and anticipate many learning opportunities.

4. On your toes

In the standard North American office, we have meetings, memos, automatic email reminders and schedules, for better or worse—worse in that this type of constant supervisory ‘remindering’ seems menial and time-consuming, but better, in that you always know when the shit you need to get done needs to get done. Things can be very easily and effectively prioritized in the North American office.

Over in China, I had to throw all that out the window; I can’t even count the number of times I devised a lesson plan based on a certain number of students (say, four) appearing, only to have just one or two show up. I can’t even count how many times I’d have a random Chinese helicopter parent wanted to ‘sit in’ and watch my class. I can’t even count how many times I’d arrive at the start of the work day, two hours before my first class, and hear ‘Oh, you have to pick up an extra class, it starts in twenty minutes…’

While this aspect of the Chinese office drove me batshit insane at times and I hated it, I can nonetheless see how it applies to game. I couldn’t do jack shit about any of it, except adapt and be flexible to the situation. How many times when you’re in the club do you see a girl you plan to talk to, and in your head you have exactly how it will go down, from your opening line to her reaction to the quick segue into the banter stage? I bet its more times than you can count. How many times did the interaction go exactly as you thought it would? I bet you can count these times on one hand. But you still got laid. Why? Because you’re loose, flexible and know that you have to adapt to things in order to maximize the situation.

5. Practice, practice, practice…

Contrary to what some might think, game is not merely a tool we use to sleep with more women; game is a discipline that teaches you how to improve your social skills, outlook, and appearance, from which sleeping with more and higher-quality women flows. Learning game may also increase your pay, secure you more clients, earn the respect of your friends and improve (or kill) your relationship with your family.

However, game, like any other skill, is only effective as long as you use it. This is one thing that keeps guys from getting into the game, and that’s how in your first year, you have to basically eat, sleep and breathe the game, and only after that can you pull it off. In spite of this, things come up; busy at work, an LTR, family responsibilities. All of these things can take the edge off your game, which is why you need to stay sharp.

EVERY SINGLE DAY, I used some well-known game tactics in class to help me control my students and enhance their education.

A student is teasing me and joking around? Playfully tease them right back.

A student thinks they have it all figured out and don’t want to pay attention? Qualify them.

A student acts out because they desperately want your attention? Aloof indifference.

Some Chinese MILFS are going to sit in and observe their child’s class? Run the classroom equivalent of nightlife generalship—dress sharp, get a fresh haircut and command the attention of all. Wingmanship plays here as well. Engage the mothers and involve them in the class as well as their kids.

There are a ton of guys who read about game, half-assedly dedicate themselves to it, see little or no results and so easily debunk it as witchcraft and bullshit. The reality of it is that game is like learning to play the guitar, learning Spanish or deciding to hit the gym to add some muscle; if you want to get good at it, you have to work at it, and working at it entails practicing it every day. You must also think about it when you aren’t practicing it. The amount of practice I got on my game in the classroom is the equivalent of at least 1000 approaches and 50 dates.

6. Ramble On

I got my certification mainly to teach children; not because I’m a closet pedophile, but because I like to have fun, and have been told in the past, mostly by women, that I’m a giant child (‘Hey Pot, this is that girl Kettle I told you about…’).

However, because my school later tried to diversify its education, that means that I inevitably had several adult students that I had to teach. Teaching the kids is fun, but it can drain you; they’re cute and they like to laugh, but they also run around like idiots, hit you and can only learn the most basic elements of the language.

The adults are a completely different wheelhouse; they can sit still, they ask tough questions and they want to listen to everyday conversation to improve. The result of this? For adults, my lesson plans consisted of a few dialogues, a few writing exercises and at least an hour of chatting and rambling.

The speaking was slower (in tune with point #1) and the questions were more basic, but the sheer amount of time I spent, just me, talking, was mind-boggling. So many guys out there struggle because they just don’t know how to talk to women, failing to realize that talking to women is just like talking to anyone; you ask and answer questions, and you evaluate and calibrate based on their answers. I have always been a sharp ranter and an engaging raconteur, but returning from China has stepped my ramble game up into God territory; an ugly man (who has been window-dressed with wardrobe enhancements and gym time) with confidence and tremendous ramble game fucks 3 points above his gradient. Roosh once said that if you want to get laid, you need to be able to talk non-stop for twenty minutes, and if you can’t do this, then to practice. What better practice is there then often having to talk for 90 minutes at a time?

7. Crazy insane, maintain frame…

One of the most important elements of game, and one of the hardest elements to stick, is the frame. What is ‘frame’? Your frame is the boundary you set through which you seek to control your interactions with others. In layman’s terms? It’s making a person reveal what you want them to reveal when you want them to reveal it. Say you ask what she does and what she likes about it and she answers for five minutes. That’s good frame, keep it up and the notch is yours for the taking. You ask what she does, she counters by asking what you do and you talk for 5 minutes? Poor frame, enter recovery mode.

With women, they like to try to break your frame with that most-common of female tricks; the shit test. In order to pass a shit test, you have to maintain your frame. I was lucky enough to learn how to hold frame by a good family friend; older cat, business connections, 46 at the time of this writing and regularly dates girls 27 and younger…seeing him in action was insane, but not everyone out there has been so lucky.

Young players often have a hard time with this; before they arrive, they’ll be out and chatting up some girl, and he’ll say something hilarious and offensive, and get swept away in her reaction in a feeble and pathetic show of back-tracking and apology-making. Seasoned vets of the hustle know that (at least 95% of the time) she isn’t really ‘angry’; she’s testing your cred to see if you’ll back down from your assertion, and as soon as you do that, the legs snap shut. The ability to keep your cool under fire is paramount.

I’ve had kids throw up on me. I’ve had kids shit their pants in my class. I’ve had kids punch me in the balls. I’ve had parents yell at me in Chinese. But, I kept it together, and maintained my frame. If you can keep frame (the Chinese have an expression ‘to keep/lose face’ that is almost analogous to ‘to maintain/lose the frame’) during any of those situations, then the tests that pretty girl at the club throws at you will be like shooting a glider out of the sky with a Stinger.

8. Generalship 101

The last point is going to be the shortest, but ask yourself this; what is game? You can throw out all sorts of answers and questions this, but bottom line, it’s being able to keep a girl’s attention long enough to convince her that sleeping with you is a good idea—no more, no less.

I feel no need to elaborate further on this, so I’ll just say it; if you can keep a child’s attention for 90 minutes, you should at least be able to keep a girl’s attention for 30.